Black Bag is a movie that seemed to slip through the cracks. In industry circles and podcasts, I was hearing such good things about it. But the general public didn’t seem to know it existed. Which is a shame. Because I do think it has fairly mass appeal. I had been meaning to see it for so long but was never able to find the time until I realized it was about to be leaving theaters. That forced my hand. So I went to see Black Bag on a Tuesday afternoon at 3:30pm. I was expecting to be basically alone in the theater at that time. But there was a pretty decent turnout, considering. I’m glad for the movie’s sake, but I was kind of also hoping to have the theater to myself… oh well! Black Bag is the latest film from Steven Soderbergh. It follows Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett as married British intelligence agents who start to suspect the other might be a mole. The movie is a light, fun, sexy spy thriller that makes for a delightfully enjoyable watch.

I thought the story was going to be a back and forth between our couple, George and Kathryn, but it turned out to be much more of a group dynamic. George is given a list of five possible agents with the clearance level and motive to have stolen Severus, a device capable of destabilizing a nuclear facility. His wife, Kathryn’s, name is on the list as well as four other colleagues. The film is bookended by dinner party scenes with these six characters, three couples, where George works to suss out the culprit. He is an expert in lie detection. These scenes are the best in the film. All actors firing on all cylinders with the fast, quippy dialogue that propels the entire movie. Attractive people in a beautiful home trying to outwit each other across the dinner table. It’s fantastic. The style of Black Bag is really what makes it so special. It’s sleek. It’s breezy. It’s cool. This is not your average action-spy thriller with stunts and explosions. It is smart, well-dressed people who are most often calm, cool, and collected while trying to think ten steps ahead of each other. Did I understand half of the technical jargon about Severus and the geopolitics? Not at all. Did I care? Not at all. The vibe matters much more than staying fully on top of the plot. The score sometimes felt reminiscent of Ocean’s Eleven, another Soderbergh film with the same sleek vibe and music by the same composer. Even the camera went for interesting, angled shots. Everything in Black Bag radiates cool.

Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett are the central figures of the film. They’re clearly in love but they make an unusual pair. Fassbender’s George is quiet and calculating. Not in a menacing way but more in a socially awkward way. He’s almost a robot. Cold and methodical, virtually impossible to one-up. Yet we never question his devotion to his wife. Meanwhile, Cate’s Kathryn has much more life in her. She’s sultry, poised, and confident but with the same lethal coldness that makes both her and husband the expert spies they are. This is further driven home by her effortlessly elegant wardrobe and the most luscious hair I have ever seen on Cate Blanchett. Rounding out their elite group of agents are Clarissa Dubose (Marisa Abela), a surveillance expert, her much older boyfriend managing agent Freddie Smalls (Tom Burke), managing agent James Stokes (Regé-Jean Page), and his girlfriend bureau psychologist Zoe Vaughn (Naomie Harris). The whole crew is great and each fits perfectly into this world. Regé-Jean Page has barely been seen since he broke into stardom in the first season of Bridgerton and he reminds us here why so many were swooning over him: the man is undeniably charming and smooth. But the real standout of the supporting cast is Marisa Abela. You may know her as Yasmin from Industry. If you do know her, her star power won’t come as a surprise. And if you don’t know her, you will. Marisa plays Clarissa with all of the confidence, snark, and sexuality of her Industry character. She steals every scene she’s in. I particularly loved a shot that shows Clarissa’s stylized, bedazzled nails on the keyboard as she’s expertly hacking into agency surveillance feeds. Just that one moment says everything you need to know about her character. Iconic spy himself, Pierce Brosnan, 007, also appears in the film as National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) boss Arthur Steiglitz. His performance is brief but subverts our expectations in an amusing way.

The film’s title, “Black Bag”, is a spy term that refers to highly classified information agents aren’t allowed to share, even with a spouse. Anything, infidelities, betrayals, underhand dealings, can be conveniently explained away with two words: black bag. “Where were you this afternoon?” “Black bag.” Clarissa asks George how he has been able to make his marriage work all these years under these conditions. “We’re all professional liars,” she says. “How can you tell the truth about anything?” Romantic relationships, friendships, working relationships. It’s hard enough to find the line of mixing the personal and the professional without the added weight of classified information and government secrets. The two dinner party scenes show us on a grand scale how truly messy the overlap of different spheres of our lives can be. How do you make a relationship work with all of the seclusion and suspicion that comes along with “black bag”? Maybe the movie is arguing that is exactly what makes it work. “Black bag” also creates intrigue and forces an extreme level of trust. Someone said it is a very American idea that relationships are only successful if both people are 100% open and honest with each other. That they have to know every thought in each other’s heads. But that’s not necessarily true. You don’t have to give everything to everyone to have a good relationship. I don’t think we should all aspire to be exactly like George and Kathryn, but maybe we could all be more comfortable with the idea that it’s okay to keep some things for ourselves.

These are not your Slow Horses spies. These are not your Mission Impossible spies. Black Bag is much more polished, more psychological, but it isn’t so serious. Soderbergh, who shoots and edits his movies all himself, says of his intentions, “…for me to say it’s a movie, as opposed to being a film, implies a certain level of fun and a tone that isn’t heavy. There’s a version of this movie where you go a very different way. Where you don’t glam it up and you make it grittier and harder and kind of less fun. And that just wasn’t what I had in mind. We felt this was a real Hollywood movie and you should get movie stars, and you should make them look great. That was the movie I wanted to make.” And that’s a type of movie that unfortunately doesn’t get made as much anymore. I’m glad we have Soderbergh to do it. I don’t think I was as high on the movie as most others I’ve heard talk about it, but I did enjoy it and think it’s an entertaining, easy watch.

2025 Count: 26 movies, 17 seasons of television, 3 specials